…but many of our universities.

We idolize players of a game that champions aggression and violence. Their [way of life is] dependent on their ability to run fast, throw far and hit very hard. They are so dependent on this lifestyle that [several of them] no longer have the ability to control the aggression for which they are revered.

Lots of professional sports are scummy and are dominated by front and back office scumsters (Lance Armstrong dominated cycling for decades, Zygi Wilf continues to own the Vikings, etc.) and UD finds this unsurprising.

Yet everyone is unsettled by the particular case of football.

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Almost all cultures enjoy violent spectacles; America’s a notably violent culture; America has immense wealth to use toward refining and enlarging the spectacles.

It does seem, however, that even Americans have some breadth and scope of violence limits. Football’s unapologetic violence – highly financially rewarded violence – is getting so out of hand that people are beginning to boycott games, broadcasts, and sponsors.

None of this should surprise. People have a gag reflex, and football is making more and more people gag.

What should surprise people – and UD has no idea why it doesn’t – is the fact that this same culture of make-me-puke violence has come to dominate quite a number of our most high-profile universities.

Universities! Think of what they are! And think about what – to use one example – the University of Nebraska actually is! This is one of many universities that fought hard to recruit (although his story broke not at all long ago, you’ve already probably forgotten about this guy – he’s been overwhelmed by subsequent football violence stories) Richie Incognito, a notorious head case long before he applied to college. UN not only didn’t care – it debased itself in every imaginable way to get him.

A touch of collateral damage on campus and in town? Who gives a shit about our students’ welfare?

And UN professors? Where were the professors?

One of them, recently hired, describes the academic culture:

“Would you like seasons tickets for the faculty cheering section in the football stadium?” [the department secretary] asked.

“No thank you,” I said, effectively ending my social life at the University of Nebraska. I didn’t realize it wasn’t a question but an imperative. Faculty members were expected to wear sweaters with the school colors and hold up colored pieces of cardboard to spell out, in giant letters, eternal verities like: “Hold That Line!”

Universities wonder why on game day their student sections are emptying out… Why students either don’t show up at all, or trail in drunk after awhile, try to focus their eyes on the game a bit, and then trail out well before the game is over. Expensive experts have been called in to reverse the situation, and they’ve told universities to sell liquor in the stadium, to provide wifi, to offer money bribes, etc. But universities should look at professional football. Professional football is making a lot of people sick, and it ain’t got nothin’ to do with wifi. And then universities should look at universities. Even the deadest dead head who attends university has a rough sense of the difference between a university and the mass culture outside of the university. It’s time universities themselves got a sense of this too.